


snail mail

by hazukinagisa



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Humor, M/M, Masturbation, a lot of fucking humor, the rating might change later if they get it on but
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-18 17:50:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1437304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hazukinagisa/pseuds/hazukinagisa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>You know those guys you see on TV? The jock guys? Yeah, that's me. One thousand percent. Ask anyone at my school, I'm cool as fuck. I'm the guy that shoves nerds in lockers and steals their lunch money and I kind of make their lives miserable for a living. I'm so fucking cool, I could be in a rock band. I put people to shame. You know what else I do? I stay up hours after my bedtime and eat dessert before dinner. </i><br/> </p>
<p>An AU in which Eren and Jean are forced to be pen-pals because of a silly school project and they over-exaggerate their letters to each other and try to seem cooler than they are - spoiler alert, they're not fucking cool.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. don't lie to your new friends

You're currently sitting in your English class while your whack as fuck teacher goes off about this amazing project everyone is going to do, and to be real here, you're not very thrilled over it. Everyone gets this assigned pen-pal from some other school and they're supposed to send letters back and forth for the entire semester. For some reason, your teacher thinks this is a great idea because you get a new friend out of the deal and you also can improve your writing skills. You feel like your brain is about to turn to mush as your teacher goes on about how many schools are doing this and how this pen-pal idea is just _sweeping the nation._ If you had to compare her to anyone, you would compare her to Rachael Ray. That's how she sounds. That is her voice, completely unedited. That is Ms. Zoe. 

She gives all the students a week to write their introduction letters to their new buddies. The only thing that really bothers you about the whole thing is that no one really knows much about the person they're going to be writing to. Like, wow, you'd at least like a name and age or at least something of who you're going to be dedicating your free time to. You should say something to Ms. Zoe about how your mother told you never to speak to strangers. Although, this isn't like going on the internet and giving out your personal information. You're not going to be giving out your address, you won't have your pen-pal's address, your letter gets sent to your pen-pal's school, and your pen-pal's letter gets sent to your school. Since this project was something you had absolutely no motivation to do whatsoever, you avoided it as long as you possibly could. Which meant you wrote your letter the very last day and half-assed it terribly. 

_Hey, so, uh.. I guess this is just supposed to be some introduction thing, and although I don't fully understand it, I'm just going to get right to the point. Hi, my name is Eren, I'm sixteen and I enjoy long walks on the beach. Not really. Don't take that seriously, I actually don't like long walks on the beach. If you do, you're probably a nerd. I am a master of martial arts which means I could probably kick your ass or something. Totally not bragging, just saying. Oh, and I'm buff as shit. Thought you should know that, too. You know those guys you see on TV? The jock guys? Yeah, that's me. One thousand percent. Ask anyone at my school, I'm cool as fuck. I'm the guy that shoves nerds in lockers and steals their lunch money and I kind of make their lives miserable for a living. I'm so fucking cool, I could be in a rock band. I put people to shame. You know what else I do? I stay up hours after my bedtime and eat dessert before dinner. That means I'm so cool, I shouldn't even be writing this letter. -Eren out._

You're pretty sure lying isn't something you do when you're trying to make a friend, but really, are you going to meet this person? No, you're not, so you can exaggerate your letter as much as you want. And you're also pretty sure your teacher isn't going to read the letter over. That would be considered an invasion of privacy, right? You're supposed to have this thing closed away in an envelope, anyways. Ms. Zoe probably doesn't have the time to read everyone's letters over. 

The day the dreadful letter is supposed to be sent off, you find yourself waking up later than usual, and you make it to class practically looking like a literal piece of trash. You made no effort to clean yourself up and your appearance is looking like that of some druggie that hasn't slept and showered in five days. Your friends Mikasa and Armin notice this immediately as you stroll in class, ignoring a long _"ooooooh!"_ from your weirdo teacher as you do so. It's kind of weird, Ms. Zoe doesn't care if anyone enters the room late, she'll just make a joke and make sure it is known that that person is late. Before you sit down in your usual seat next to your friends, you go over to the basket everyone drops off their letter in, and you put a sticky note on the envelope with your name written on it. Ms. Zoe claps her hands excitedly as she sees the basket grow more and more.

As soon as you sit down, ignoring how Mikasa makes a comment about how you look like you have experienced death, you decide to listen to how Armin is rambling off in deep interest about this project, and he proudly shows you his introduction letter to his new "buddy."  
Just skimming over his letter, you can already tell its thousands of times better than yours, and has far more effort put into it. Now, you wouldn't say you're some slacker in school. You get amazing grades, thanks. It's just the fact that you think this project is utterly ridiculous. For your letter, you picked the smallest composition notebook paper, and wrote as big as you could just to take up space on the page. On Armin's letter, he has the neatest, smallest handwriting and you could see all the exclamation points he used, making his excitement obvious. You're a little jealous, but you're sure whoever you get to write to is just as enthusiastic about this as you.

"What did you write for your letter, Eren?" Mikasa asked, leaning over her desk slightly to speak to you. 

You chuckled nervously, lifting a hand to scratch at the back of your head. "I kind of just.. Bullshitted the entire thing." What, was this person going to show up on your doorstep and beat the shit out of you for being a complete weenie? 

"But, why? I think this project sounds really fun!" Armin is quick to say in response, his voice nearly raising to ten more notches as you can just hear how enthused he was. 

There was a quiet _shhh_ from the other side of the room and you rolled your eyes as you muttered off to him, "Then why don't you write my letters to this person?" 

Mikasa gave you a light punch in the shoulder before sitting up straight up her own chair once again, and Armin decided to wave you off, turning his attention back to the front of the class as Ms. Zoe began talking out loud. The good thing you'll have to admit is that, since this whole letter thing became a thing, class got easier and the classwork started getting smaller. Probably because you were going to have long things to write throughout the week, and you totally understand that, and maybe you should have a more positive view on things. It's mainly that the idea of the entire thing seemed so _elementary._

By the end of the class, you go up to talk to Ms. Zoe as everyone is practically flooding out of the room, and you take a deep breath before letting out the longest sigh imaginable. "Um.. I know you said it was supposed to be a surprise, but can you at least give me an idea of who I'm going to be paired up with?" You asked, then quickly added, "I'm not asking for a specific name, though!" 

Ms. Zoe tapped a finger against her chin, humming in thought. "All I can really say is that it'll be a boy your age. I'm sure you two will get along great!" She replied cheerily, giving a big smile to you, and she turned back to the stack of papers she was flipping through. All you could do was give a nod and then you were leaving. You had an entire week to mentally prepare yourself for this. As soon as you got home, you were going to take a shower, probably to cleanse your soul or something from the previous week.


	2. Real fucking eloquent

_First of all, I want you to think about what you just sent to me. A scrap of paper with the most horrible, childish, chicken scratch handwriting -- which is obviously enlarged to take up more space and fool your, most likely, air-headed teacher. I bet they didn't check what you sent because I'm sure if anyone did read your letter they would've thought of your choices and asked you to re-evaluate your life. That is, of course, if you showed someone. Secondly, please tell me how you're still sane after putting on such a pathetic spectacle. Anyway. With that out of the way, it's time for my introduction. Luckily for you, I'm an honest man. Also my teacher won't read over this because he can't give less of a shit. He claims that he's just following orders from the board and he has no final say on the matter. So, hey Eren. I'm Jean Kirschtein. Full name because I'm a P.B.D and people love my last name, I'm sure you do. "Jean" is the French variant of "John", meaning "Blessed by God". "Kirschtein" is a German variation of Christianus, or cherry pit. German, Kirsch- ‘cherry’. I don't like talking about the fact that my name can be linked back to a cherry pit. Though, I do like cherries. They're my favourite. Thought you should know that. I'm sixteen years old. My birthday is April 7th and I'm an Aries. Aries are known to be great leaders. Which I'm told I am. 'Totally not bragging'. Not only that, I'm also the ace of the Soccer team and I have great academics. I'm also not your average popular guy. As you say you are, which I doubt. I bet you only have like, two nerdy friends that sit with you during lunch and play Pokémon or something nerdy like that. I can stay up for days at a time without the use of 5-hour energy drinks. Also, I do have a band. We're indie rockers with punk-ass tones and every day I'm in my garage, gripping the microphone and singing my golden heart out, I can almost taste the intangible screams and adoration of fans from a large, glowing stage. As you can see, I'm real fucking eloquent too. I can put you, your shitty dessert, your lousy dinner AND your shit lies to shame in a damn second, kiddo. You're going down. And I'm gonna be a safe distance away to know about it. -Love, Not Jean._

 You cannot believe the shitty pen-pal you were assigned. No joke, you wish you could've been assigned some random kid with awful grammar and barf-worthy syntax. But instead, you got this garbage. This fucking piece of shit. It was literally a gross piece of composition notebook paper. You sat down and read it over and over again. You fucking stared at it for an entire week. Do you know how long that is in hours? 168 hours maximum, looking at that 'letter'. Nothing could erase it from your mind. No matter how many books you read or how many blogs you scrolled through -- no text post was powerful enough to throw that letter in the shitter.

 So after an agonizing week, you finally get into class and put your envelope down in the basket. It's perfectly sealed and even sprayed with some cologne of yours. You decided to do that since you think this Eren kid should totally smell you. Because you smell amazing. You take pride in that. Among other things.

You sit down and almost immediately get bombarded with questions from three different directions.

Connie slams down on your desk first with a loud question that sounds kind of like "What did your person say?!"

You're not sure if that's exactly what he asked because Sasha was already shouting over him, "Who'dya get, Jean?! A girl? Did you send her your number?"

Marco was the only one who calmly asked you if you got someone nice, but he was interrupted by the other two, so he just laughed nervously.

"Okay, yeah, no. I got this huge douchebag named Eren or whatever. His entire letter was him pumping his ego alongside his own dick."

 Apparently, that mortified Sasha and Connie enough that they looked at each other awkwardly. Quite obviously they were having this internal immature chuckling fit with each other. Those two were going places. Weird places. But places. As they were distracted with giggling to themselves about the fact that you just said your pen-pal was waxing his carrot, Marco turned to you again.

"Is your pen-pal actually mean or are you just giving him a bad name?"

"Have I ever done that, Marco?"

Silence.

"Alright," you forfeit quickly. Marco gives you  _those_ eyes and you know he'll win this whole silence game anyway. "the guy really does sound like a tool, though."

Marco offers you a soft smile and a shrug. "Maybe he was just trying to impress a new friend."

"Yeah, well, you don't lie to your friends."

 You and Marco talk for a bit about this asshole and you tell him some of the unbelievable shit you read and he tells you what he thinks might be an exaggeration and what might be the truth. You don't listen to him. Which is usually how you end up in detention. But this isn't one of those occasions.

Now you're remembering when you were reading it for the first time. How for a moment you thought, "Yeah, I like long walks on the beach too -- oh." when you realised he was a foe.

The voice of your freckled friend cuts your reminiscing short. And you look back to him and manage to focus on what he's saying.

"...eally nice girl. Her name's Christa. And..."

You lost interest. You really don't care. You don't wanna hear about nice pen-pals that aren't yours. You'll talk about nice pen-pals when Eren CockItch strings up a pair and treats you with a little respect.

 Connie chimed in and told you about his pen-pal. He kept going on about how her name was Spanish for 'my house'. You're amused for just a moment. He also says she seems very serious.

Sasha also brought up her pen-pal. She said she felt intimidated by her, and how she didn't give a full name or anything like that. Sasha said the introduction was cryptic and she has a lot of questions.

Your teacher silenced everyone and went on to say that he'd have your responses mailed as soon as possible. And because he's a prick, he gave the class extra work.

 At the end of class, your teacher called you over to the front once everyone was dismissed.

"Yes, Levi?" No one questioned why he  _ordered_ everyone to just call him that. He hated being called 'mister' or 'Mr.Levi' or anything other than 'Levi'. It felt dumb. You felt like you should be buying jeans. He was a creep anyway.

"...Did you spray your envelope?"

"Yes."

"It's a nice smell. What is it?"

You stay quiet for a moment. Then answer. "Axe--"

He cuts you off to compliment it again.

There's silence.

You walk off.

He's absolutely fucking terrifying.


	3. first of all, fuck you

You can't believe this guy wrote you an entire fucking novel.  
You contemplated crumpling up the piece of shit you got in return, but you tried to keep yourself emotionally stable as you got out your pen, got out your stupid composition notebook, and you got cracking. You can't let this guy beat you. He sounds too cool, though you won't actually admit that. Because admitting that is like admitting defeat. 

You were going to get that letter written early, and you were going to slam dunk that shit in that neat ass basket Ms. Zoe has in her dumbass, ridiculous, elementary styled class. 

_First of all, **fuck you.** _

You were sure to write that nice and neat, making the 'fuck you' stand out as much as possible. 

_You are literally the biggest piece of trash I have ever witnessed on binder paper. Like, get the fuck off your high horse, you're not better just because you use big words and insult my Pokemon. And what the fuck was with that shitty Axe spray? Did you actually feel the need to fucking spray your letter because you thought I smelled or something? I'll have you know I have outstanding hygiene. I take a shower every day, I know how to scrub my own goddamn body, and I use cologne. I even brush my teeth three times a day, thank you very fucking much. And guess what, bitch? I'm an Aries, too. Which means I'm also an excellent leader. March 30th, mark that shit on your calender. Eren Jaeger's birthday. And to get all fancy and fucking proper like you, being of German origin, "Jaeger" means "hunter", there you go, kiddo. _

You felt a sense of pride once again building back up after having it just vanish from reading that douchebag's response. You decided to end your letter with - _Ew, isn't it too soon to use "love" to end your letter with?_

And it is done. After having it look all neat, you put it in a nicely colored envelope and you made sure to spray the entire thing with your nicely smelling cologne. You dropped it in the basket as you walked out of Ms. Zoe's class, and once it got to lunch time, you plopped down at your rightful seat at the normal table you and your two friends sat at. 

You held a hand up as if it was going to put a pause to the intense Pokemon battles going on as Mikasa and Armin had their DS's out. 

You cleared your throat a little, "Mikasa, what does P.B.D mean?" 

She just gave you this look and looked back down at the game in her hands. 

Upon getting absolutely nothing for a reply, you looked at your blond friend. "Armin?" 

"I think it means Pretty Big Deal." He said with a shrug. 

Almost immediately, you let out a hiss of annoyance. Pretty big deal? This fucking Jean Kirschtein has the nerve to think he's a "pretty big deal"? 

"What kind of people did you get?" You then decided to ask your friends, trying to at least distract yourself from the actual garbage you got. 

"I got a boy named Connie. He seems pretty nice." Mikasa said, not seeming nearly as unsatisfied as you. Or, unsatisfied at all, for that matter. 

"Uh.. I got this girl named Annie, and she seems a little odd." Armin went on in disappointment, his nose wrinkling up a bit. "She didn't seem all that happy to be my pen-pal, I mean, her letter was really, really short!" Just like yours. 

"I'll take her." You offered right away, raising your hand another time. 

"No!" 

"Hey, all I'm saying is that it's great to know there's someone out there who feels the same as me." You'd rather have a dull pen-pal than that Axe spraying jackass.

It wasn't really until later on that week that you felt yourself actually growing anxious towards getting a letter back from your new buddy. The sarcasm was heavy on the buddy there. You just really wanted to see what he had to say to you squashing his shit. He thought he could mess with you? No, you're the P.B.D here. You bet everything he said was a lie and he's probably just some losing sitting on the internet running some stupid blog. He's probably that loser that wears a dumb hipster scarf and glasses and writes dumb reviews. 

God, he probably thinks he's like some kind of photographer or something. How lame would that be?

You can't stop thinking about it. You're a thousand percent sure he fucking bleaches his hair. He said he was in some indie rock band. Something like that. He tried to make himself seem all high and mighty, though you're sure he had a shitty garage band. If he's not hipster trash, he probably think's he's hardcore trash. If he had an awful undercut, you wouldn't doubt it.

This is only the third letter exchange and already you feel like you've made a new enemy. You can feel the pure hatred for this guy boiling in your blood. You don't know where this little punk is, but you feel the need to travel to wherever he lives just so you could punch him square in his dumb face. What if you're completely wrong about whatever assumptions you've had about his appearance? What if he looks like one of those guys that lives in their mother's basement and has Cheeto crumbs all over their face? One hand on his computer mouse doing some hardcore online gaming, the other hand fishing for a bag of chips. 

There it is. You have it figured out.

You know the days are getting close to where you can actually have Jean's letter present in your own hands, though you can't help but walk up to Ms. Zoe's desk one day after class is over, and try once again to get some kind of information from her. 

"Since it's been a few weeks, is it alright if you tell me where my pen-pal is located? Or at least what school he goes to?" You asked her, putting on a hopeful expression. 

With the look she gives you, you pretty much know the question you asked her was useless. "Unfortunately, we're not allowed to tell you that unless your pen-pal is comfortable enough to tell you on their own." 

"Is that so.." You muttered off, unable to hold back the eyeroll you give. 

"What you and your pen-pal talk about is between you. Go crazy, ask all the questions you want!" You haven't even known this guy long, but you know for a fact that if you asked him about where he lives, he would reply with something witty like, _why are you so obsessed with me?_

You're not obsessed with Jean, by the way. 

You hate him a fair amount.


	4. You feel it

 You're standing in your bathroom, looking in the mirror and pulling your hair back. You just finished mixing your bleach; you give an annoyed sigh when you notice just how much you have to bleach. You hate when your roots come out so quickly. No one will understand these struggles.

You admire your own shirtless reflection for a moment. Then you snap back to reality, oops there goes gravity.

As you smear some bleach on your head, you begin thinking about that Eren kid. You set up your desk specifically for writing letters to him. Not that he's that important. He's not. You're not attached already. You hate him. Shut up.

Who the hell does this kid think he is? Telling you all this shit about him. Pushing kids into lockers? Yeah right. He probably got all defensive because you hit a nerve by calling him a nerd. God, you wanna hit on him.

Hit him.

You want to hit him.

 You grunt because you cannot believe the thought that just slipped through your mind. And now you're bleaching your hair with a very questionable feeling tugging at your brain.

Anyway, tomorrow rolls around. And it's the day you get your reply. You get into class and right away you're hit with chatter about how excited everyone is to get their pen-pal's response! Wow! Fuck them, you think. Fuck them and their equally as ecstatic pen-pal.

The only person you can understand is Annie. That's because whenever she's asked about her pen-pal, she just glares for a moment and looks away.

You feel it.

 Levi went along with giving out the letters. But because he wasn't interested at all, he decided to call student by student to come up and get their letters.

When it was your turn, he held the envelope a bit tighter when you tried grabbing it.

You pull.

He doesn't budge.

"Uh... Levi I--" It hits you. That smell... That familiar smell... You look at him questioningly.

"Good, isn't it?" He kind of... sounded like he was competing. Was he trying to 'wear it better'? That's so dumb. He's so dumb.

"Of course it's good, I have my own, as.. you _know_." You decide to answer, because usually when you don't he still stares at you for quite some time. And that makes it awkward for everybody.

Without another word, Levi finally let you take the damn thing and you wonder if it was worth the effort.

You sit back down. You don't do much other than stare at the envelope until Sasha, Connie and Marco get their letters. Once they do, they're giddy in their seats.

 Levi calls for the attention of the class. Voices lower and all eyes are on him.

"I recieved a call from the teacher of the class we were assigned to send letters to. Ms. Zoe has informed me that students have asked some questions. So before that happens here.... Don't ask me things. These letters are between you and the other student."

So pretty much, what you got from that was: don't ask the teachers anything, they don't even know.

"However... Despite most of you being young adults, I imagine your letters are shit. I've seen your essays. Therefore, to make this whole project more appealing for not only you and your pen-pal, but also the teachers that must mail them, I recommend a few tips. Ask your pen-pal about their hobbies or if they have a part-time job. Ask them about their favourite colours and what their favourite show is." He waved his hand as he gave more 'tips'. He went on listing basic shit you ask people when you meet them.

Sasha raised her hand.

"Yes?"

"W-what if your pen-pal doesn't seem to like such personal questions?"

 You look at Sasha now. Wow, who the fuck did she get? You kind of feel bad for her. She's nervously chuckling after that question. Whoever she writes to, they must be too much for her to handle.

Levi interrupted your pity. "Then ask about their school. Makes sense, doesn't it? It's a school project. Ask about their least favourite teacher. They sound like a drag."

Connie and you snicker. Both of you are aware that Sasha said her pen-pal was intimidating, but was she so scared of them that she didn't wanna ask about their favourite colour? Jeez.

 Now you're dismissed and you're waving off Connie and Sasha. You leave with Marco, as per usual.

"Levi seems to actually speak to that Ms. Zoe character, have you noticed?"

Is Marco trying to gossip or is this an actual question?

"I guess so," You shrug. "do y'think they used to be pen-pals? Heh."

Marco chuckles and humours you with his answer. "Maybe. That would explain why he's finally giving us writing tips for once."

Before going off your separate ways, Marco says, "I'd love to see his letters to you."

You think about it. Maybe you'll show Marco one day. Maybe even Connie. Actually, maybe soon. It all depends. Is that a good idea? Is that some kind of trusting thing? Wait, why do you care if Eren trusts you with his shitty letters? Chances are, he's showed all his nerdy friends your letter.

..Oh dear lord...

He turns to walk off, and as he's waving he adds, "I hope you two start getting along! Maybe you'll appreciate the project more than your blog if that happens!"

Now just how dare he.

With an incredulous laugh you wave him off and get your ass in gear.

 You get home and you storm off upstairs and get in your room. You drop your bag on the floor and right away you decide to cleanse yourself of Levi's creepy words today and Marco's insulting words about your blog. Your blog is fucking great, okay? You almost have two thousand followers and you get at least one anonymous message a day. Hell yeah. Your Biggest Fan changes by the minute.

Your original posts get up to 100 notes within the first few hours of being posted. Once, you were on Tumblr Radar. Yeah. It was a selfie of you in your fall outfit while holding up Starbucks. And the post died within two weeks. But still. It was there.

 As soon as you're finished with your shower, you don't hesitate to pull your chair back, slam down on it, and get your pen out. You're fucking ready. You're prepared. You're doing this, dammit.  
Eren's letter is propped up so you can reread it as you write your response.

_I cannot believe you're sending me this shit once more. There's so much I don't like about you and I have not seen you in action. I can only imagine. I sit here, pen in hand, fistful of hair in the other. Looking down at your letter and wondering why this is happening to me. Listen Jaeger, I don't give a squirt of a piss about how often you scrub shit off your knees or how often you brush cum out of your teeth. I sprayed my envelope because I felt like you should smell your powerful enemy, got that? If you wanna read deep into it, go fucking ahead but don't you give me your shit about your accusations you little bitch. But no worries mon ami, I won't be spraying it this time round. I realise you don't deserve my scent. On top of that, my teacher is a huge creep and might have pressed my envelope against his nose for hours after class. I swear, I feel like one day I'm going to wake up with that guy on top of me. Like, not body on body. I mean he'll be hovering over me. Staring at me with his sharp, squinty little eyes._  
 _Wow, back on track. I don't think I'm better than you because I have a clearly better vocabulary. I'm better than you because I'm Jean Kirschtein and you're Eren Jaeger._  
 _Oh, "hunter"? I've heard most hunters are nice because they're such deer people._

_-With much, much love, Jean Kirschtein_

The letter is perfect. You feel accomplished.

Wait!

He's so worried about you using 'love'...

You are struck with the dumbest idea, but you run downstairs anyway.

"Ma! Ma!!" You call out, looking like a lost idiot holding a piece of paper with the neatest cursive handwriting you've ever done.

 Soon enough your mother walks over to you. You have no clue where she was before. She's wearing an apron so... maybe she's getting dinner ready. Thank god. Maybe you'll be cool and ask for dessert first, just to boast about that.

"What?" She sounds a bit impatient right now. You probably scared her because you sounded like you had something really important to tell her or something. But in reality, you just hold the letter up to her.

"Kiss the corner of this page."

She looks at you. You can tell she barely believes what she gave birth to.

You're a douchebag in a vest holding up a letter and asking your mommy to kiss it for you. Get rid of the letter and the favour you're asking, you're still a douchebag in a vest.

Nonetheless, she huffs and kisses the page.

 Perfect. A beautiful mulberry lipstick stain is on the edge of the letter.

You run upstairs and quickly grab a red pen. You circle the kiss and write _"just for u big boi"_ with an arrow pointing at it as well. See how he likes that. "Ha! Nerd..." You actually mutter that to yourself.

Now, you put the pen away and scan the letter.

 It's beautiful. You managed a perfected cursive style, especially with your name. This time, you also wrote on coloured paper. It's a soft purple colour that you very much appreciate. You have a knack for colours, actually. You're somewhat of an amazing artist. Not only do you draw, you're an amateur photographer with an outstandingly bright future in photography. The various cameras you have around your room are just simple trophies of your amazing skills.

 As soon as you're done, you grab his letter and stuff it back in the envelope it was sent to you in. You proceed to put it in a drawer with his other letter. Putting your own letter in a nice looking envelope, you put it away safely. You then go on ahead and fix up your desk how you usually have it. Which isn't anything amazing. You just put your laptop smack in the middle. Other than that, everything else stays on your desk. Even when writing or drawing.

 Once you open up your laptop, you're already logged into Tumblr. You decide to make an angry text post. You've already made a text post about the whole project, so no need for that.

_'i cant even with my new penpal??? i dont understand it. hes hella rude. im not gonna use his name bc i have too many followers & god knows if someones following me who knows him lmao. but for real wtf. hes such a douche i cant even deal'_

You put it under a 'read more' and tag it with '#vague blogging', '#rude as hell', '#cant deal' and your text post tag. And soon it's up for curious bloggers to see. You go to check how many people are on your blog. At the moment, there are 10 people on that specific post within twenty-four seconds of posting it.

God, you love the internet.

After a while of scrolling through your dashboard and wandering the internet, you turn your head and look at that drawer.

...There was something about the letter he sent that caught your attention... What was it?

You get up after a few moments of trying to remember what was so different. When you got the envelope, it was sealed normally. There was nothing strange about the envelope itself. The only difference you could think of was that it was a lot neater.

 Once you get it out, you study it for a few seconds. And you're slapped in the face with a brand new scent. You've bathed in almost every cologne known to man, but why was this scent so new to you? The fuck? Is he trying to prove he's more 'indie' than you? He's more into what's underground and NOT mainstream? What the fuck! How dare --

It smells good.

Is this what this guy smells like?

It's not fair.

You hesitate, feeling really stupid as you inch the damn thing closer to your nose. You close your eyes and decide to let yourself register the scent, his words, and you want to imagine what he looks like.

For mocking purposes. Obviously.

The only light in your room at the moment is from your laptop. So there you are. Holding Eren's envelope up under your nose and fucking sniffing it with your eyes closed. Alone. In your dark room.

 You manage to think up a silhouette before the sound of your door creaking open causes your eyes to crack wide open and you squeeze out a loud screech.

You jump out of your skin -- you drop the envelope back in the drawer and slam it closed. Then you jerk up to look at your door, hoping some paranormal shit caused that creaking noise.

Alas, it was not a ghost. It's your mother telling you dinner's ready.

"I'll be down in a damn minute! Have you ever heard of KNOCKING?!"

Dinner's pretty awkward since your mother caught you sniffing a letter. But you're not asked about it. Well, not verbally. She looks at you like she has some questions, but doesn't dare to ask them. Not in front of your father. Not like this.


	5. oh no, he's hot

You're sitting in the back of your class, tightly gripping onto Jean's letter and you're taking very deep breaths as you're trying to be prepared for this. Last time you weren't prepared and you actually felt like walking out into the middle of the road because, really, getting hit by a car would've felt exactly the same as reading Jean's letter.

Everyone else is excitedly tearing open their envelopes, just bouncing with joy as their read whatever their buddies have said. Then there's Ymir. She's sitting a few chairs away from you, laptop out and at her desk, letter completely untouched by her side.

You feel it.

You're still a little amazed at how much shit all the students in this class can get away with. It's like Ms. Zoe thinks everyone is here all for fun. Someone could fall asleep right in front of her, and she'd just continue on her merry way.

But anyways. You slide on over to the chair next to Ymir and watch her as she's scrolling through someone's blog with a look of disgust on her face. "This fucking guy thinks he's so great." She muttered, a hand in her hair in frustration.

She clicked onto his "about" page, and immediately, you both rolled your eyes as you read it. "Of fucking course he has a donate button." Ymir huffed under her breath.

_my names Jean Kirschtein. im sixteen years old. an amateur photographer. i like long walks on the beach and writing. here's my art tag. here's my photo tag. here are all my tags. and here's my face tag. expect great things._

_i dont do promos & rarely follow back. _

"He sounds exactly like- Oh my god, that's _my_ Jean Kirschtein!" You deadpanned. Oh no, he's hot. "I knew he was a shitty hipster with a blog.."

About ninety percent of Jean's selfies consisted of him doing a peace sign with Starbucks.

"Send him anon hate." You say, reaching out so you could click over to his ask button, but Ymir slaps your hand away.

"Send him hate. Off anon." Well, go hard or go home, you guess.

You go back to your actual chair and decide to spend the rest of your time in class in peace. This letter could be saved until you go home. You fucking knew he liked long walks on the beach. What a nerd.

On the way home from school, you've already decided that whatever ridiculous nonsense he has written to you is completely irrelevant because you have shit on him now.

Since your desk is an absolute mess you have to write your letter on your bed. Your desk is a good representation of your life; confusing, out of control, depressing. There's no fixing it. It's so bad you don't even want to bother with it. You don't have the motivation.

As usual, you get out your handy dandy composition notebook. You set that off to the side, Jean's letter awaiting you first. Even though you don't need to read it, because you're dead set on your entire letter just being shitting all over him and his stupid hipster blog. And his horribly ~~beautiful~~ ugly face. 

You had to stop every five seconds while reading his letter, because that's how stressed out this guy makes you. 

And what the fuck was that kissy mark? Did Jean actually put on lipstick and kiss the page? 

You think that, by the end of reading that letter, all the cells in your brain have actually died. 

_So I saw you were talking shit about me on your awful blog, you little bitch. That's right, I found you. Let's not talk about how. Let's talk about how you actually think, you, you with the stupid blog and all of your cutesy "amateur photography", actually think you have the right to talk shit to someone like me. Like, wow, at least I don't take selfies making a peace sign with my Starbucks coffee, and at least I don't make a fucking duck face while doing it. You think you're so cute, don't you? Well, I got news for you, buddy. **You're not.** You try to act eloquent as fuck when you're writing a letter to me, but on the internet you're literal trash that acts like he can't spell. I can't even deal. Like, what the fuck. I can feel your confusion within the twenty question marks on almost every sentence. Don't worry, I'm sure your thousands of followers can understand just one simple question mark. And since you made a post wondering about how hot I am, I took the liberty of actually sending a photo of myself, as you can see. All you had to do was ask nicely, "bruh."_

 

_-"hella" love, Eren._

_P.S was that kiss mark literally necessary? Like, you don't know me, man. I got enough people all up on my junk, I don't need you._

You think this may be it. You have this little punk right by the balls. 

 And since this is becoming a tradition, you make sure to spray the paper with as much cologne as you possibly can without getting sick. As soon as you start wheezing and choking from the smell, you've decided that was enough. You use another brightly colored envelope just like last time, since Jean said something in a text post about how "omg colors are so gr8" so he'll probably appreciate that. Not that you want to please him. Because. All you want to do is make his life a living hell. 

You're not obsessed. 

You can't be obsessed over someone with the url of _jkirschsexual._

And even though by the end of the night you found yourself huddled completely underneath a blanket in your bed, laptop out, scrolling through the '#face' tag on Jean's blog, you still will not say you're obsessed with him. You just can't believe how fucking ~~cute~~ hideous this guy is.

He's totally not your type. Definitely not this boot wearing, scarf wearing, cowboy hat wearing prick.  He even wears a goddamn vest!

Disgust.

You hate him. You hate him and all of his annoying textposts.  

One thing you could not believe - well, you could, - was that he publicly posted the hate that Ymir sent and he responded with an actual, real meme. All Ymir really did though was say how fake she thought he was and how ugly his cowboy hat was, and there it was, big and in view, the repulsive "U MAD?" meme. 

Of course after that, he got loads of messages from friendly followers and anon's stating how great he is, and that he shouldn't listen to that 'dumb bitch.' 

He's a meme loving fuck and he needs to be stopped. 


	6. Eren Jaeger knows

 You think you just pissed yourself.

Your routine consists of you waking up, stretching, going to the bathroom, going downstairs, brushing your teeth and then checking your blog before you head off to school. But today you woke up to 1 message.

Usually, you don't sweat that. Like you said in a letter you sent to Eren, you get one anon per day. You really are a P.B.D. But this time it wasn't an anon. It was an actual blog.

It was some 'ymirthelesbian' blog. You check it just briefly. It was a shit-ton of lesbian gifs. You decide to grow a pair and try to figure out who this chick is.

When you go to her 'about' page, you read up on her. Turns out, her name actually is Ymir. She's apparently seventeen and goes to... Heritage Peak? That sounds stupidly familiar.

Wait.

Heritage Peak!

That's where E--

"You bastard!" You actually shout at your laptop as you slam both fists down onto your desk. It's about six in the morning and you're having a mental breakdown.

You decide to reply the most ridculous way possible. Maybe a reaction gif? Of someone dramatically crying? No. Even better. You're going to meme this prick. You're going to meme him, his lesbian friend AND your followers so fucking hard.

You realise you put Eren before your cherished followers.

But let's not talk about that.

 You decide after replying publicly, you should clarify you, in fact, do not enjoy memes. So you make a post.

'I only use memes ironically.'

How you like them apples, Eren? Yeah, you're typing normally. Fuck him.

You post that shit and tag it with '#meme hate' and '#stop memeing 2k14'.

Okay. Now you're about to be late because you're trying to make it obvious you don't like memes! Fuck! You shut your shit down and run downstairs. If this was anime, you'd stick bread in your mouth and sprint.

But because it's not, you just bounce out the door on one foot while putting on your shoes as you scream to your mother that you're leaving.

She warns you that you haven't had any breakfast, but you're already in both shoes and running full speed like an idiot.

 Once you're down in class, Levi decides to give a pop quiz! He says students have been slacking due to the project, so to make sure they understand school is still school, before giving the letters back, he passes out a paper filled with math problems.

What the fuck.

You can only focus on the sudden pain in your stomach. In fact, it's so sudden, you jolt up in your seat when it hits you. God, you're starving. You put a hand over your stomach and close just one eye. You're fucking cringing, hunching over and in immense pain.

You're in this pain because you were trying to prove a point to Eren Jaeger!

You came in late, you skipped breakfast, BECAUSE OF EREN JAEGER!

 Every problem has a small box made for your answer to be scribbled in. Here are your answers:

  * 1
  * 2
  * 3
  * 4
  * 5
  * 6
  * 7 (?)
  * 8
  * 9
  * 10 (??)



That's it. You literally filled out a quiz with those answers.

 Dreadfully, you get up and put your paper on Levi's desk. You're still hunched over and dragging your feet. Before he mentions that though, he stares at you. Your hand has not left the paper. He reaches over and gives you a 'B'.

"What the dink --"

Your question is interrupted. "Do you need to use the bathroom? Are you constipated? Is that why you were late today?"

You stare right back. You cannot believe this thirty-something year old man makes poop jokes more often than freshman.

You shake your head and admit you didn't have any breakfast, but you'll be okay after lunchtime. Not that he really cares. Or shouldn't, at least. Just keep teaching, teacher. Jeez fuckin' Louise.

 Finally you sit down. And your stomach pain suddenly faded. It was now just an empty feeling. Ah, thank JEEEESUS.

Marco is up and turning in his test. You know he actually tried. Next, Sasha gets up and turns in her test. Once she sits down, she leans over and whispers to you.

"Y'okay Jean?" You guess your cringing and hissing in pain didn't go unnoticed.

You nod. "I'll be perfect after I get something to eat... I skipped breakfast today."

She almost chokes after gasping loudly. Soon, she's digging through her bag. After rummaging for a while, she leans over again, holding a small bag of Lay's for you.

You really are blessed.

 Without hesitation you yoink that shit out of her hands, and thank her before noisily opening the bag and shoving a bunch of chips in your mouth. Between your loud chewing, you mutter some swears and curse Eren's name.

Marco catches that.

"What's he got to do with your tardiness?"

You blankly stare at him. With that 'you ain't seen what I've seen' expression.

 He took the hint and just chuckled.

Good. Back right the fuck up there buddy.

 And soon it's time to get your letters.

Levi leans over his desk and lazily calls students up again.

This time, he doesn't play tug of war. Instead, he brings up how heavily it's dowsed in cologne. He asks if you and your pen-pal are okay. You just nod and go back to sit down.

There's no disguising it.

Right as you sit down, everyone's hovering over you. Not Annie. She doesn't care.

 But everyone else is surrounding you. You feel like Danny Zuko in Grease. Everyone around you is snapping their fingers in that bad boy fashion and asking you to tell them more, tell them more, can he get you a friend?

All Grease references aside, your classmates are now asking you about this fume of a letter.

"Why's it smell so great?!"  
"What IS that?"  
"Did your pen-pal spill something?"  
"Did they send one of those scratch'n'sniff things from magazines?!"

"Guys!" You snap. There were too many questions. Too many people. Causing too many problems. There's not much love to go around --

Okay you really have to stop.

"It's just a stupid thing my pen-pal does. Okay? He just sprays the cologne on for no damn reason."

You wave everyone off and Levi helps by telling everyone to cool their shit and get back to their own seats.

 Connie laughs at you and your dumbass pen-pal. He knows too much.

Marco turns to you. "Hey, Jean." He actually sounds concerned.

"Yeah?"

"Who was that person who sent you hate on Tumblr, man?"

Sudden war flashbacks hit you all at once. You clench your fists. "Y...Ymir..." You grit your teeth.

Sasha spins in her seat. She kind of just cut herself off while speaking to Connie to respond to you, "Yeah, that's who I was talking about!"

"What?" You and Marco ask simultaneously.

 "That's my pen-pal! Ymir!"

IT'S ALL HITTING YOU.

"EREN." You fucking shout that at the top of your lungs.

You sit there, fucking steam coming from the top of your head. You are furious. This piece of shit of a pen-pal, somehow found your blog, and got their lesbian friend to send you hate. From what Sasha tells you, chances are, Eren asked for anon hate, but she didn't listen.

 You fucking jog home. Kick your shoes off. And gallop your happy ass upstairs. The door slams loudly and you fucking body-slam into your chair; you open your laptop with brutal force. You savagely type in TUMBLR.COM, all caps, because you are angry. You make a text post. Directed at y'know who.

'I'M ON TO YOU, YOU LITTLE BITCH. I KNEW SOMEONE WAS IN MY #FACE TAG FOR 25 MINUTES AT 2 IN THE MORNING LAST NIGHT. JUST DIDN'T KNOW YOU WERE SO INTERESTED.'

You slam enter button as you type up your tags. '#HATER OF ME', '#BACK THE FUCK UP' AND '#WHYRE YOU SO OBSESSED WITH ME'

BAM. It's up. Fuck you, Eren Jaeger.

 And all of this, before you even open his letter. So you clear the way. You practically throw your laptop onto your bed. And bang the letter down on your desk.

The envelope is almost torn in half as you attempt to open it quickly. You feel bad because the colour is nice. But anyway, it might've been to spite you. Maybe he thinks you don't like obnoxiously bright colours. Jokes on him! You do! You like of a lot of obnoxious things!!

 So boom, it's open. The first thing to fall out is a fucking picture. Did he screenshot the hate you were sent and print it out just to send it to you? God, you hate him so much. You reach over and grab it, flip it, and suddenly you feel your face loosen up.

...Oh.

It's a picture of him.

 Your palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy. 

You ignore all of that though. Details that don't matter, right? You're just caught off guard.

What the fuck. Why are his eyes so nice?

This stupid idiot in a god damn muscle shirt and a snapback. Why the fuck do you think this is even remotely attractive?

You DON'T. He's NOT. Eren Jaeger is a piss-ant who is NOT cute at all.

...Fucking dammit...

 You put the picture down so you can't see his fucking face. And read his piece of shit reply.

Alright! God dammit! You grabbed the nearest pen. It wasn't until you were three sentences in that you realised you fucked up and used a glittery, purple gel pen. Fuck it. It's too late.

_There's a huge difference between talking shit and making a fucking post on my own blog. What? I gotta ask for your approval before I can complain about what a horrible pen-pal you are? Bite me, Jaeger. I know you and your little friend Ymir schemed some dumb anon hate shit. She probably didn't wanna use your cowardly tactics though. Some mad respect for her, I admit. Then again, her blog sucks and since she's apparently a friend of yours, she's probably everything I hate in a person. A shitty blogger with shitty friends like you._

_Did you enjoy my #face? I have the Online Users Counter, nerd. And I saw someone there for **25 minutes**. Was that you? It's obvious your friend Ymir didn't have any interest in me. So hope you liked your stay. Meanwhile, your picture is just as awful. It's a fucking selfie of you in the swaggiest getup I've ever seen._

_Spelling the way I do in text posts is so other people can 'relate'. It's called gaining more followers. Get your head in the **fame** , loser._

_Also I didn't necessarily make a post wondering how hot you were. Christ. That post specifically reads: 'he better be fine as hell or else he has -5 reasons to be such a dick'. Got that?_

_Fuck you, Eren Jaeger. I bet you have a fucking scenery blog._

_-Jean "thought it was too soon for 'love'" Kirschtein._

_P.S. I sure as shit doubt that anyone is interested in your junk. Unless you mean your trash personality. Then yeah. Sounds interesting._

 

 The deed is done. You let the pen roll onto the floor because you have no clue why you even have a glittery gel pen anyway. But it's done now. Now you seal it, spray it and lock that sucker away.

You get up, and put his letter with the others. And now your hands smell like that damn cologne. You don't mind it, really. Not that you'd admit it. Or anything like that. Just like you won't admit you purposely 'forgot' to put his picture back in the envelope.

 Now, for future reference, you did lay in bed for a while. The following events did not happen immediately after you finished replying.

You were laying down, gripping your blanket as hard as you could. You were so mad. This stupid fucking project. Now this kid's got your blog. He's seen your face far too many times. He sees when you reblog '#NSFW' posts in the dead hours of the night. He sees those stupid fluffy things you reblog when you're lonely during a Disney movie. _Eren Jaeger knows._

 For some reason, you find yourself holding up his picture. Your blanket is thrown over your head, as if that would hide you.

It's about 1:43 in the morning.

And now you've got his scent, his face, his words.. all of that floating around in your stupid empty head.

What the fuck is your hand doing?

Why is your hand suddenly by your thigh? Why is it slowly inching closer to your --

"JEAN!"

You automatically throw the covers over yourself. As if that sudden movement wouldn't call more attention to you.

 So far, your mother has walked in on you sniffing a letter and now she walks in on you almost palming yourself.

How can you live this down?

 Luckily, it's too dark for her to notice much of anything. She just came in to warn you about the time and how no matter how sleepy you are, you're not going to miss tomorrow.

Before you try sleeping again, you make another text post.

'i cannot believe what just happened'

'#stupid fuck'.

You shove his picture under some books on your desk. Then sling yourself back into bed.

You really, really can't believe what just happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ignore any typos i'll fix them later it's 5:54am im so sorry


	7. she knows

_You know what, dude? Fight me IRL, no lag._  
 _For fucking one, I would just like to say I wear swaggy get ups ironically. You know, just like how you use memes ironically. Who the fuck uses memes ironically? It's like, I thought you were trash before, but I cannot find a word for how fucking pathetic you are now. And I bet you loved my swaggy get up. If you jacked off to my picture, I wouldn't doubt it._  
 _I don't know how I even manage to get so fucking worked up over you, it's ridiculous. You're obviously the most embarrassing person on the face of the Earth. I get secondhand embarrassment just at the thought of you. Like, holy fucking shit, you're such a pretentious douchebag. I hope you lie awake at night rethinking your life choices. I mean, what's it like being you? What's it like being a piece of shit hipster with a blog who thinks they're a great fucking photographer who takes pictures with their piece of shit Starbucks coffee?_  
 _This is, what, the fourth letter and I already want to bash my head into a wall just from knowing someone like you exists? Jesus Christ, get the fuck over yourself, dude._

_-Eren "shut the fuck up" Jaeger._

_P.S. I bet you want my junk._

This time when you wrote the letter, you made sure to get actual binder paper and were kinda surprised that the thing flooded off to two pages, and that sure as shit wasn't because you have, and you quote, "the most horrible, childish, chicken scratch handwriting".

You have flawless handwriting and you know it.

Your writing was perfect and a decent size this time. It wasn't like a third grader wrote in size twenty-four font. You'd say your writing was a size sixteen. Again, flawless.

You sealed away your letter - letters, two pages, yeah, fuck Jean - and sat the cutesy pink, cologne sprayed envelope away off to your nightstand.

Grabbing your laptop, you tugged it forward and started scrolling through Tumblr.com.

Who the fuck did Jean think he was? What was wrong with seeing beautiful scenery photos on your dashboard?

He didn't know shit.

You thought, in fact, that being a scenery blog made you a deep person. You know who's not a deep person? Jean, the meme loving fuck.

Being a scenery blog, you didn't have too many followers, but in your opinion, that was pretty great considering that didn't require a whole lot of work. It made you feel underground as fuck.

Hell yeah, you're the true indie one here.

Pulling up Jean's blog, ignoring that he has that stupid Online Users Counter, you went straight to his askbox. Staying off Anonymous, because you're indeed not a coward, you started typing out a message to him. 

A simple "Guess who, bitch?" and you sent it. That'll show his ass. 

You decided it'd probably be a good thing to close your laptop before you got carried away and end up finding yourself stuck in his #face tag. But you'd only be stuck there because you need more reasons to judge him. 

Not because you think he's attractive or anything... 

You may have lied about staying off Tumblr.com, but not about the whole #face tag thing, because as soon as you closed your laptop, you pulled up your phone and you were on Tumblr.com mobile. 

There were so many beautiful scenery photos to admire. Such as, the beach - but that was something completely different than enjoying long walks on the beach. That's still for nerds. 

Then the nice looking, typical, Japanese photos you always see of schools, or any kind of buildings, with the pink flower pedals - though that might be more of something for those "kawaii" blogs, but you're not about to pass up good photography like that. Any photography is better than Jean's photography. 

After reblogging about six or seven photos, you were sure that was enough and you locked your phone and shoved it into your backpack for school. You still needed to get ready for that. 

You took a thorough shower that always did wonders for your hygiene, because your hygiene was flawless as fuck. You had this routine - first, you used your two-in-one shampoo and conditioner. Second, you used this acne wash for your face. Then last, you scrubbed the fuck out of your body.

Once your shower was done you always used this lotion that makes your skin perfectly soft and glow. Then you brushed your pearly whites. For your clothes, you didn't put as much effort in because you're not hipster trash like Jean.

Though, you didn't put on a muscle shirt and a snapback because you were serious as shit when you said that swaggy get up was ironic. 

A plain green polo and a pair of khaki shorts and you were ready. 

As soon as you get to class and plop down in your seat, Ymir crowds over to you and slams down in what should be Armin's seat and shoves her laptop onto your desk. You take a deep, heavy breath in discomfort and look at her. "Do you see this? He replied to me with a fucking _meme."_ She practically hisses. 

"Yes, I see that." 

"He's going down." Then she's off to the other side of the class again. This war between them will never end. But, you know what? So will the war between you and him. 

Literally, Armin strolls into class five minutes late with Starbucks. This was the perfect moment.

You waved him over to you, and once he sat down, you leaned over with your phone out and quietly called for a selfie. You had him hold the drink up and you both did peace signs and duck faces. 

Fuck yeah, you posted that shit on Tumblr and tagged it with #face, #self, #fuck you jean, and #jkirschsexual. 

You actually made the caption for the picture _"Are we as cool as jkirschsexual yet??????"_ The several question marks heavily being inspired by him. 

When you get home, your mother is immediately right there, screaming at you from the top of her lungs to do chores and you feel like you got bitch slapped right in the face. 

"Mom, I've been doing homework!" You half shout and whine at her, and that may be a lie because the only thing on your mind for the past week has been Jean.

That sounded more gay than you intended--- 

But, hey. It was true. 

"Don't lie to me, boy, your ears are red!" She has a finger pointed right at you and you are afraid. "You've been getting lazy and I haven't seen any chores done in a while!" 

 _She knows._ You keep your mouth shut and slide right by her, going into the kitchen and you drop your backpack down on the floor and get right to the dishes. 


	8. FU CK YYUu!!!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [17:23:33] toast: IT'S BEEN TWO MINUTES AND I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE WHAT A RIDICULOUS FUCK JEAN IS

 You lie awake at night thinking about your life choices.

There's a lot of shit you wish you never thought of or did. But this guy is ruining your fucking life. You've mostly been messaging his friend Ymir via Tumblr. She's pretty cool once you get behind her threats and insults. You think that's all a sham. You strongly believe you and Ymir could potentially be frienemies, if anything. Y'know, like those assholes who hang out together and do asshole shit to others while insulting each other but never really unfriend one another.

Like that.

 But you don't see that ever happening since this whole thing is pretty one-sided. You play along with her messages. You answer some privately. You post the ones you know your followers will defend you over. Ha. Joke's on her. You also use memes as often as possible.

Now, the time finally rolls around and you have to respond to your great pen-pal. You take out your pen, and you get cracking.

As you read his letter, you get more and more upset. You can't help it. You're shaking. This kid is causing your mental breakdowns at the oddest fucking hours and you're so mad.

_You legitimately sent me a physical letter with the first line as "Fight me IRL, no lag". Understand how fucking stupid you are right here, right now. As you're reading this, think about how fucking stupid you are. Who the hell actually spends money on something they're going to sport ironically? And you call ME the pretentious douchebag. Take a look at yourself, fucknut. You actually GO OUT, SHOP, PURCHASE, things you are going to put on your gross little body. IRONICALLY. You spend money on things you don't actually like! Think about that, you heap of flaming shit._

You don't actually think his body is gross. From the pictures you saw, he's pretty tan. And you'd even dare to say swole -- No, you shut the fuck up, Jean Kirschtein. Get the fuck back to writing.

_I don't like your swaggy getup!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You litT L E F U CK I NG P IE CE OF SH IT WH Y WOU L D I P UT M Y HAND AN Y WEHRE NE AR MY DI CK WH IL E YOUR F ACE I S IN MY M I ND FU CK YYUu!!!_

You attempt to erase your fuck ups. You make it worse. There was already a tear in the paper because of how fast and hard you were writing just now. But it tears even more when you attempt to erase black ink.

You hate your life.

It ripped enough that he probably can't make out most of your mess up anyway. The bottom of the page is still fine, and your first paragraph is untouched, mostly.

You contemplate on getting out a new paper and neatly rewriting to make it seem like you have some composure.  
But does he deserve it?

...

You grab the paper, shove it away in a random drawer and rewrite it anyway. You can't let him see you at your weakest.

_You legitimately sent me a physical letter with the first line as "Fight me IRL, no lag". Understand how fucking stupid you are right here, right now. As you're reading this, think about how fucking stupid you are. Who the hell actually spends money on something they're going to sport ironically? And you call ME the pretentious douchebag. Take a look at yourself, fucknut. You actually GO OUT, SHOP FOR, AND PURCHASE things you are going to put on your gross little body. IRONICALLY. You spend money on things you don't actually like! Think about that, you heap of flaming shit._

_No, I don't like your swaggy getup. It's stupid. The whole idea of dressing up ironically is stupid. Save that shit for Halloween. Though, from the looks of it, you don't even need to think of a costume. You can dress up as a ostentatious asshole who spends money that MOST LIKELY isn't his own on clothes he doesn't even actually like wearing._

_Good job, Jaeger. You're the dick of the year._

_What's it like being a huge tool in a tipped hat with the words **"I <3 HATERS"** printed on it? _

_You're fucking garbage in a muscle shirt._

_-Jean "Didn't go anywhere near my groin with your face in mind" Kirschtein_

_P.S. I don't._

 

 When you get to school one day, before going to your own desk, you stop at Marco's.

"I need a favour."

"What is it, Jean?" Marco almost sounds worried.

You extend your arm and point at Connie. "From you too. Aaaaand.." You point at Sasha as well, "You too."

The four of you huddle up over Marco's desk like you're strategizing something. In reality, it really is just you asking for a favour.

"I need to find this guy's tumblr. And bring him down."

 Now, everyone was determined to find him. You knew this because the next day Marco brought his iPad. And was scrolling through scenery blogs he found through that 'ymirthelesbian' blog. You pay attention to their about pages and all that and wave them off.

You almost give up.

And you got  _the message._

Yeah.

Two days after asking for help to find him, you open up a fucking message.

"Guess who, bitch?"

Your teeth nearly break.

 No. You will not caps lock this motherfucker. You will not just delete it. You will not do that. You're going to give him what he  _doesn't_ want.

**A meme.**

Yeah. You reply with: "doge back. very surprise. much bitch."

 You post it publicly. And you throw your head back as you laugh proudly.

 This doesn't last. You end up clicking onto his blog.

You spend about 3 whole hours scrolling through it, too. He has infinite scroll enabled so you didn't realise that you were probably looking at month old posts within 15 minutes. But it didn't matter. You needed shit on him.

What the hell?

His blog was entirely scenery. You take photos like that! You take photos of pretty things! Why the FUCK doesn't he like YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY?

 You scroll back up, go into his about.

_|♈| 16 | ♂| P.B.D_  
 _My name is Eren and I probably hate you._

"P.B.D?!?!!?" You scream at the top of your lungs. You hear something crash downstairs. You most likely startled your mother so bad she dropped a plate. "You're not a big deal, you fucking fuck! I'll show you a big deal! I'M THE BIG DEAL!"

 You run over to your envelope. You don't give a shit if you sprayed it already. You don't care if you already sealed it. Upon tearing it open again, you unfold the letter and add right at the bottom, in massive letters. "YOU'RE NOT A P.B.D" it's messy, it's big, it's there.

Folding it up again you put that shit away. It looks awful. The envelope looks awful. It's a mess but who gives a shit. You're turning it in like that and he's gonna deal with that. You FUCKING HATE Eren Jaeger. And his blog. And his face. And his cologne.

 However, later that night... You find yourself lurking around his '#face' tag.

"Oh my god." Yes, you're whispering to yourself as you go along. You just stumbled upon a fucking Facebook-like selfie. You laugh at it but it's cut off. Completely. Because despite the fact he looks like such a fucking moron with his shirt lifted up in front of a bathroom, and you can see his stupid fucking toilet paper rolls in the background, you feel something.

Something you've only ever felt once before.

And this cannot happen again.

 With that being said, you do actually end up sticking your hand down your pants.

"Ah... Fuck Eren... hate you, _hate you.._ "

Right when your imagination is kicking in --

"Hello son!"

You turn around slowly. It's your mother, you're sure of it. She's walked in on you so many times before. She's never caught you like this. And you _always_ forget the lock.

But this time it's different.

When you turn around completely, you see who it really is.

Your dad.

Your father is staring at you; with your dick in your hand and the most pitiful look on your face. With your laptop open with some fucking asshole taking a bathroom selfie.

You begin to sob hysterically.

 Yes. You walk into school with a very huge letter jacket. There are dark circles getting worse and worse under your eyes. You don't even care about the fact that your roots are out; since you haven't bleached your hair. You've been scrolling endlessly through Eren's blog. Replying to Ymir. Trying to take good selfies to shame him. You can't do it.

Especially not after what happened with your father. You will never live a normal life again.


	9. wanna skype??

It's Spring break and for some reason, that throws everything the fuck off for you.  
Everyone has to put sending letters to their pen-pals on hold and that makes you feel a little... Empty? You shouldn't, because you still think that guy is a complete douche. And you still shouldn't feel any different because you know this guy now has contact with you over the internet.

Even though you don't have to go to school and write to him on paper, either way, Jean has a way of making your life a living hell.

You have two weeks to do whatever you want - which means stay home and do jack shit. You know Ymir is going to spend time with her tiny blonde girlfriend the entire break, and Mikasa and Armin may occasionally come over to your house to do jack shit with you. You'll all probably sit around the living room and play Pokemon together.

For a few days, you don't hear much from Jean except for a short ask from him every so often saying something completely fucking dumb like, "you suck" or "your blog sucks, why did you reblog that one thing" and that's as far as it went.

Although, a few times he's submitted videos to you of people ranting about their pet peeves and he's captioned it "me to you". 

You kind of ignore his nonsense for a while and take the time you have on break to finally get to your chores, just to get your mother to lay off you. You clean your room, do the dishes, vacuum the house and make everything look presentable.

When you were done doing chores, you felt pretty accomplished and thought it was time to dedicate the rest of your time to yourself. So you went to go take a nice, long, hot shower, then you got comfortable in your bed to do absolutely nothing.

You got your laptop, got huddled under your bed as usual, and went on Tumblr.com. There was an ask waiting for you and you were ten thousand percent sure it was from Jean. In a way, you were a little disappointed lately at the asks he's been sending to you because somehow, it looked like he was getting bored of arguing with you. Does that mean you win or something? Has he actually given up? Nerd.

The one single ask just simply said; soooo uhh wanna skype or something??????

_Wanna skype?_

**_Wanna skype??_ **

What does he think this is?

You actually put your computer the fuck down, got up from your bed, and paced back and forth in your room in contemplation. What did this mean? Was this some kind of truce? Does he think just because he asks for your Skype this means you two are cool? What the fuck, are you friends now or some shit?

Taking a deep, calming breath, you move back over to your laptop and reply to him - a little hesitantly - with your Skype information, and you log onto the thing. Within a few minutes you have a friend request and you accept it.

Staring at the chat, you watch as he starts typing something and you see that pencil slam the fuck down. What?

He doesn't say anything for a few seconds, and you're sure this is where he begins rethinking his life choices. Then.. He starts trying to video call you. Oh jeez. 

...

You let it ring for about five seconds as you practically scramble to sit up in a comfortable position and throw the curtains to your window open to let some light into your room, so your room doesn't look as dark and dead as your soul. You click to accept the call.

Which was probably the biggest fucking mistake of your life considering how awkward this is, but hey, at least he looks incredibly attractive.

It's kind of funny because he's trying to look everywhere but his computer and he keeps crossing and uncrossing his arms, and looking down, and scratching at the back of his head.

"Why is your face red?" Is the only thing you can say, barely able to hold back a chuckle.

"...It's the resolution of my camera, you fucker. Learn about computers." Even his voice is attractive, wow.

"Yeah, sure. Blame it on your camera." Your eyes practically roll all the way back into your head.

You hear him huff a sigh and he lightly taps his fingers against his chin, pursing his lips a little. "Are we on this call just so you can make fun of me or something?" He asks, sounding slightly irritated.

"You're the one who called me."

"Shut the fuck up." You let out a laugh at that. He's actually.. Really cute and for some reason not as intimidating as he is over a stupid letter. You feel the need to mess with him and you don't know where this sudden confidence came from.

"Aw, is someone embarrassed?" You coo as if you're talking to a little kid, propping your elbow up on your knee, cheek resting in your palm as you look at your computer.

He looks even more shy than he did a moment ago.

"You know, Jean, it's totally fine if you get a little flustered." You continue on, just because he hasn't replied yet. His lips press together in a thin line and you're sure he's getting annoyed by now. 

"I'm not flustered, you piece of shit." 

"You can always hang up whenever you want." And more silence once again. "I don't know if you noticed, but I actually got one of those online user counters, and I see someone's been in my face tag quite a lot these past few days." 

His head was down for a few seconds but that makes him snap up immediately and he raises a finger. "Okay, look, what about that one time you were stalking _my_ face tag? Huh?" 

"You didn't even deny that you were in my face tag." His shoulders sag and his hand flies up to cover his face. Then that hand comes up in front of his camera and you assume that's the signal for you to shut the fuck up, so you do, just to make him feel a bit better about himself. 

Getting your phone out, you start mobile blogging even though you could do that on your computer, but you'd rather have Jean in full view in front of you. Shut up, that's not lame. 

It probably takes Jean a few minutes to realise you're actually on your phone, because you hear this quiet "who's that" and you have to raise your head to look at him, slightly quirking an eyebrow. 

"What?" You ask. 

"Who're you texting, nerd?" 

 _Oh,_ he's jealous. You can't help but grin, and you look back down at your phone. "Why do you care?" 

"Is it about Pokemon?" 

"None of your business, Jean." 

He sighs loudly like a ten year old child who didn't get his way, and he pulls out his phone as well. You're going to assume the both of you are mobile blogging in peace, because it's not even that long before he lets out an even bigger sigh. "That thing you just reblogged, why didn't you reblog that from me? I have, like, pretty much the same exact picture in my photography tag." When you look at him, he's almost pouting. 

This guy is going to be the death of you, you swear. 

"Oh, let me go remove that damn post, go on your blog, and reblog it from you." You roll your eyes, shaking your head as you do just that. Once you're done, you let him know, and he checks your blog and gives a satisfied thumbs up. 

"So, uh.. Who were you texting?" He mumbles, but you can still understand him and you can tells he's trying hard not to seem _too_ interested. 

"I'm sorry, I should probably ask for your permission before talking to someone that's not you." You exaggerate completely as you speak, bringing a hand up your cheek. 

He does that really cute thing again where his eyes go wide in embarrassment and he looks off to the side. "I mean, it's kinda rude that you're talking to other people while being on a call with _me."_ And he points another finger, this time at himself. 

"Don't worry, my heart only belongs to you." You say sarcastically with a smirk. "I only have eyes for you, Jean."

He actually looks like he's ready to throw his computer. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> omg i'm so sorry eren's chapters are never long enough


	10. Jean's Obsession

 Your most visited page on Google Chrome is 'http://www.deputysoandso.tumblr.com/ask'.

Okay, it might be spring break, and you might not need to send Eren anything at all, but still... y'know, why not? He tried you on Tumblr. You try him. That's how this works apparently. So that's how it shall stay! Fuck yeah!

You've been sending him a bunch of dumb shit. You submit videos to him. You sent him a bunch of asks. They started off real elaborate. But the more and more he replied to them, publicly or not, the less you wanted to actually argue. Sometimes, you'd find yourself asking him actual questions. Not the usual "did you reblog that quote from ur mom????" but actual questions like "whats up" because for some reason you were legitimately curious as to what he was up to and you just wanted to know.

 And no, this isn't ALL you've been doing so far during spring break, okay? You've hung out with Connie, Marco and Sasha.

Yes you'd chill at parks like cool kids. Fuck yes.

But it was also true that once they left and you came back home, deputysoandso slapped you in the face harder than your mother did on Halloween night last year when you tried scaring her.

 So one day, you realise that yes, you wanna know when he's online. Yes, you wanna know when he's offline. And yeah, you wanna be able to ask him shit without an ask limit. Therefore, Skype is the best option. Without a second thought, you ask him for his Skype. Hell yes.

No, this was not a truce. You two are not cool. You are not friends or some shit.

You just wanna keep an eye on him.

You're not a creep.

 When he accepts you begin to type something.

It was like... 'sorry for being such a dick'

But no. No, you will not go down without a fight. He cannot win just because of his replies and his face and all that. No way.

You misspelled everything since you were typing quickly. 'so rr y ffor be ing s uch a dikc' You just highlighted it all and deleted it.

 When he answers, he actually picks up with his webcam on. And you brace yourself as his video is buffering. Bam. There he is. Sitting up like he was  _ready._ There's light coming from what you're guessing is a window but to be real here it looks fucking Holy.

Holy? No! Don't you fucking.

Now you're shifting about awkwardly. Doing weird shit with your arms and trying to look around your laptop and around your room as if you have interesting shit around you. You don't.

Why did you do this to yourself?

Wait. He's wearing a fucking snapback right fucking now while Skyping you, God, you hate him.

 He speaks before you do; which you're thankful about. Really, you wouldn't have said anything clever to break the ice whatsoever. You explain that the resolution of your camera is what's making you look red. You said you were an honest man in one of your early letters. But Eren had cursed you and you guess you succumbed to that curse now.

 When he does that thing with his voice -- you initially find it obnoxious -- but his actions make it so stupidly cute. When he talks to you like that, when he looks directly at his computer -- which is where you're at. He's looking at you, bro. Right there. There it is. And you hate it. You feel your shoulders tense up and you almost feel yourself dive into your neck as if you're hiding when you're completely exposed. He makes you feel like a damn kid. The way he speaks to you; it's even worse than you read it from his letters. Why's his voice so damn great too? Screw him.

 You believe it's going well. You loosen up as he checks his phone. Nice. Okay. 

...

Ugh. Why is he on his phone for so long? You lean forward and cup your face with both hands. Watching him.

Not in a creepy way.

In the pay-attention-to-me-look-I'm-even-pouting way.

When you ask him who he's texting, you're still not being creepy. And you're not jealous. He's just hella rude. As you've said before. Nothing more to it. Of course he can text his nerdy friends about Pokemon or whatever the fuck. He doesn't need your approval. Maybe you'd appreciate it. But no. No that's. No way.

 Since he's on his phone, you go ahead and minimize his ass and scroll through Tumblr. Even though you kinda keep his screen floatin' around so you can look at him while scrolling through. Ahem.

_"Don't worry, my heart only belongs to you. I only have eyes for you, Jean."_

Oh fucking dammit Jaeger not this. Anything but this. You can literally be told ANYTHING but that! You're internally ripping your hair out. He's fucking smirking. Why's your face red?

OKAY. YOU KNOW WHY YOUR FACE IS RED, SHUT UP.

 When you calm down over what he said, and manage not to throw your laptop any which way, you idly fuck with your hair. You're kinda glad you got outta that slump and bleached it again. Thank fuck. He'd never let you live that down, y'know? You can almost hear him mocking you for bleaching your hair. As if it wasn't obvious -- well, it is Eren.

A while passes and it's just Eren trying to make you flustered, succeeding then chuckling about it. You get a few jabs back at him.

 Like when things got quiet again. And you decided to take him by surprise. He laughed quietly at something on his phone, and you smirked.

"You're cute." Maybe you blurted that out. Or maybe you really did say that to get him all sorts of shy. But more than likely, it was a combination of both those things.

Eren raised his head just slightly before actually looking up at the screen; yeah, he did a double take. Which made you feel super accomplished. You can see him chew his bottom lip nervously as he looked up at something away from his screen. "No, yooooou are." You can tell in his tone he's trying to mock you, but everything about his expression tells you something's sincere there.

 He laughs and does this cute thing in which he dips his head off to the side and brings his phone up to his face in an attempt to hide. Then goes back to mobile blogging. But he looks pretty content with everything in the world now.

"Hey, Eren." You interrupt whatever he's doing, you sound like a child trying to get his mother's attention. When he looks up you continue. "Y'want my number?"

"Are you trying to sext me, Jean?"

"Christ!" Dammit, how come when you try to make his face red you flush like a fucking toilet?! "No! I just wanna lay down but I don't --"

"Alright, I'll give it to you. But don't text me the way you make your text posts."

You try not to embarrass yourself further, so you give him a smirk and a shrug.

 So, before you text him, you end the call. Of course. Or else you'd be sitting there texting each other while still on camera. Which would be dumb. As you tell him you want to lay down and mobile blog like a certain loser, you ask if he'll be up for much longer. He says yeah and that he'll text you instead.

"Alright, bye Eren."

...Silence...

" _You_ hang up first." Eren insists, jokingly.

"Wow, okay." You hang up. Confused. You didn't catch that right away. Now that you did, you bury your face in your hands and find yourself doing that in bed. You could've been like 'no, yooou first!' but no, you're too dense. Nice going!

You quickly take out your phone. Save him as a contact, and text. Right away.

And that was the beginning of something real fucking gay.


End file.
